6.10. Distributed Mass

You can use this feature to distribute additional mass across the faces or edges of the flexible parts in your model. Using this feature, you can idealize the inertial effects from the bodies/entities that are evenly spread across the surfaces of your model, for example, mass contribution from paint, external equipment, a large number of small objects spaced evenly across the surfaces, etc.

To define a Distributed Mass:

  1. Select the Geometry object (or a child object).

  2. You can then add a Distributed Mass object by:

    • Selecting the Distributed Mass option from the Mass group on the Geometry Context tab.

      or...

    • Right-clicking the mouse button and selecting Insert>Distributed Mass.

      or...

    • Selecting the desired geometry in the Geometry window, right-clicking the mouse, and then selecting Insert>Distributed Mass.

  3. Specify the Scoping Method property as either Geometry Selection or Named Selection. Based on the selection made in this step, select a:

    • Geometry (faces and edges only) and click Apply in the Details view for the Geometry property.

      or...

    • Face-based or edge-based user-defined named selection from the drop-down list of the Named Selection property.

  4. Specify the Mass Type as either Total Mass or Mass per Unit Area. Based on this selection, enter a value for Total Mass or Mass per Unit Area.

See the Distributed Mass object reference page for additional information about the properties of this feature.

Limitations

Note the following limitations for the Distributed Mass feature: